Shashi Tharoor: Among the many international consequences of Barack Ob...

India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay.

Shashi Tharoor

country history people

A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient, linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal, immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.

Shashi Tharoor

philosophical fate wise

There is not a thing as the wrong place, or the wrong time. We are where we are at the only time we have. Perhaps it's where we're meant to be.

Shashi Tharoor

only-time wrong-time meant-to-be

India has been born and reborn scores of times, and it will be reborn again. India is forever, and India is forever being made.

Shashi Tharoor

born india forever

Hindu fundamentalism is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals; there is no such thing as a Hindu heresy. How dare a bunch of goondas shrink the soaring majesty of the Vedas and the Upanishads to the petty bigotry of their brand of identity politics?

Shashi Tharoor

vedas identity-politics fundamentals

Freedom of the press is the mortar that binds together the bricks of democracy -- and it is also the open window embedded in those bricks.

Shashi Tharoor

bricks democracy together

If you believe in truth and cared enough to obtain it, you had to be prepared actively to suffer for it.

Shashi Tharoor

enough suffering believe

It's not the side of the bigger army that wins. It's the country that tells a better story.

Shashi Tharoor

army winning country

If America is a melting pot, then to me India is a thali--a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast.

Shashi Tharoor

different together america

On Gandhi: Don’t ever forget, that we were not lead by a saint with his head in clouds, but by a master tactician with his feet on the ground.

Shashi Tharoor

saint feet clouds

No one says "Gee Whiz!" very much these days, of course, not even in America - both because that expression has long since been supplanted by others more colourful and less printable, and because our capacity for surprise has long since been dulled by a surfeit of sources.

Shashi Tharoor

expression long america

India shaped my mind, anchored my identity, influenced my beliefs, and made me who I am. ... India matters to me and I would like to matter to India.

Shashi Tharoor

who-i-am identity mind

Resolutions aren't self-executing. Somebody has to provide the soldiers, take the risks, risk their blood and their treasure to go out and implement such a resolution.

Shashi Tharoor

soldier self blood

Diplomacy is much like the "lovemaking of elephants", which is accompanied with a lot of bellowing and other sound effects, but no one can be sure of the consequences for at least the next two years

Shashi Tharoor

elephants two years

India is more than a sum of its contradictions, any truism about India can be contradicted with another truism. There is no fixed stereotype. But even thinking about India makes clear the immensity of the nation-building challenge.

Shashi Tharoor

india challenges thinking

In India we celebrate the commonality of major differences; we are a land of belonging rather than of blood.

Shashi Tharoor

differences land blood

Terrorism is a principal preoccupation in most of our international contacts.

Shashi Tharoor

preoccupation contact terrorism

What economic libralisation needs, if it is to succeed , is a general acceptance that reforms are for the general good, that they might seem to help some more than others, but that in the long run everyone will benefit from them. Such attitude is far from being realized

Shashi Tharoor

acceptance running attitude

The only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts.

Shashi Tharoor

greater india ideas

The British are the only people in history crass enough to have made revolutionaries out of Americans.

Shashi Tharoor

revolutionary enough people

Among the many international consequences of Barack Obama's stunning victory in the United States is worldwide introspection about whether such a breakthrough could happen elsewhere. Could a person of color win power in other white-majority countries?